Denver Botanic Gardens' School of Botanical Art and Illustration is designed to teach the skills necessary to portray plants accurately both for scientific purposes and for beautiful plant illustrations. The school is open for everybody, both for committed illustrator and enthusiastic amateur. The program can lead to a Certificate that is offered only a few locations worldwide. The Certificate Program was initiated and established in 1990 by Angela Overy.

It takes a gifted artist to become a great teacher and those who dare to teach never cease to learn.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

The September Untitled night at Denver Art Museum was called Offshoot and focused on everything that flowers can inspire. Three of our instructors were involved in this event to represent our school: Susan DiMarchi was demonstrating expressive ink, Susan Rubin had two 30-minute workshops on textile design and Randy Raak had also two workshops on scratchboard technique.

As always we enjoyed participating and meeting enthusiastic arts lovers.

Susan Rubin's plan for the 30-minute textile design workshops

Randy Raak gave his 30-minute workshops on scratchboard technique with the help of Mr. Bones, who is here posing with his portrait executed in 30 minutes by Randy Raak.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

In addition to our core classes we have recently completed
courses in Illustrating Colorado mushrooms, Water lilies and Roses. We have also had
classes in Herbs and Poisonous plants.

Last weekend award winning illustrator Lynne Chapman from Sheffield, U.K. demonstrated for the students how to design the characters in a picture book effectively.

Finally Sarah Homfray, also from the U.K. returned for the third time to teach us traditional embroidery techniques,
this time blackwork which can be traced back 500 years and likely
originates in Spain. Blackwork is like a refined value study done with needle
and thread instead of graphite pencil or ink.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

A
forensic artist assists law enforcement by combining artistic skills with
scientific information to aid in criminal investigations and case prosecutions.
During this talk four different categories of forensic art will be discussed to
clarify when and how forensic art is used in investigations.

Cynthia March received her forensic training
from Stuart Park Forensics, Denver FBI & CBI, The National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children and forensic artist Karen Taylor. She currently
works with law enforcement

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

THE CALL IS OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS: Annual juried exhibit from the School of Botanical Art and Illustration highlights species from Plant Select®, a leading nonprofit cultivator, and distributor of plants suited to the high plains and intermountain regions.Entries are accepted until October 9, 2015. The exhibit display time: November 22, 2015 - February 14, 2016 Venue: Gates Garden Court Gallery, Denver Botanic Gardens.Please click here for more details about the exhibit.